


if morning never comes to be

by m4rkab



Category: Fallen Hero Series - Malin Rydén
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Identity Reveal, Nonbinary Sidestep, Other, Suicidal Thoughts, and that ortega snippet ;), i mean this is pretty fluffy compared to what i usually write, spoilers for the demo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-06
Updated: 2019-03-06
Packaged: 2019-11-12 18:23:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18016022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/m4rkab/pseuds/m4rkab
Summary: “I know you’re real,” Ortega says, with so much certainty that -- even though you know it's not true -- it's impossible not to believe him at least a little bit.For a moment you think you can see what it's like not to hate yourself.





	if morning never comes to be

**Author's Note:**

> malin is hiding the ortega re-gene reveal and i'm losing control of my life so i made this
> 
> i don't doubt the real thing will be much more painful to read but what can you do
> 
> my sidestep's name is percy and they're nb, their villain name is entropy, their puppet's name is lucius.  
> title from be still by the fray

Halfway to Ortega’s apartment, you start to lose your nerve.

You are walking both because it is easier to think on your feet, and because you have never been comfortable in cars. Even this long after they found you broken on the ground, shattered glass scattered around you, and took you into the back of the ambulance, something as simple as getting into a cab makes your neck prickle and your stomach churn.

This way you have one less excuse to stop. To run home. To keep your secrets safe.

Of course you do not have to tell him. He won’t know what you are hiding.

He never has.

But keeping this many secrets is exhausting in a way you never thought it would be, and you know Ortega knows something is wrong, and you know you cannot keep your skin hidden forever if this relationship keeps going the way it is.

Because something will happen. Your control will slip.

But this way at least you can contain the fallout.

This way you will know it is coming.

You fight every single step to the building – the doorman remembers you from last time, you know adjusting his memories would never slip by Ortega – every single step up the stairs, every single step to the doors.

You need a few moments to steel yourself. But in the end you press the doorbell, and Ortega is there.

“Percy,” he says, smiling at you, stepping aside to let you in and you can’t stand the warmth in his eyes, in his smile, knowing you are holding the equivalent of a knife in your hands, a knife meant to cut his throat.

“We need to talk,” you say, before you can second-guess yourself further.

Everything is so much easier when you only have one option.

Ortega’s smile melts into concern. “Of course,” he says, shutting the door behind you, keeping it unlocked, and you can _feel_ how genuine he is, of course he would make this harder, not even knowing what it is he’s doing. “What about?”

“About what I told you at the diner,” you say, hoping Ortega will piece it together on his own because you don’t think you can tell him again, because this is hard enough already, your hands are already shaking, you already want to run.

And he does.

"You said you had enemies."  
  
"Yeah, I guess I did." you try to laugh, but it comes out more of a sob. "It was more of the truth than I wanted to tell. You _always_ do that to me. But of course you didn’t understand.”  
  
"Percy, you aren't making any sense."  
  
You smile. It is a sharp, gleaming thing that holds absolutely no humor -- you can feel it; it's by no means an alien expression to you -- and you think Ortega notices that too, because his expression goes even more concerned.  
  
You are no stranger to self-harm. The scars striping your arms are testament to that.  
  
More importantly: so is the fact that you are standing here.  
  
At least this way you're inviting it.  
  
You don't think there will ever be a time where this doesn't hurt. But Ortega is supposed to be your enemy, and this way you don't have to make the painful decision. You don't have to rip off the band-aid.  
  
He'll do it for you.  
  
So you stare him straight in the eyes, summoning all your borrowed courage, and you say, "I’m not what you think I am."  
  
"You..."  
  
For a moment, the look on Ortega's face is a sort of detached resignation. You recognize it, because it's an expression you saw a hundred times at the Farm, whenever you looked in a mirror.  
  
At some point you started breaking them instead.  
  
But in the end his face falters into confusion, not condemnation. Not yet. "What?"  
  
You take a deep breath. It shudders horribly in your lungs, too close to a sob.  
  
You can do this. You can.  
  
You are prepared for the disgust on his face.  
  
(you are not, but you can pretend)  
  
"Percy," Ortega says, worry on his face as he takes a step forward, hand extended like he wants to touch you, and you jerk backwards like he's pointed a gun at your head.  
  
He might as well have.  
  
"Stop making this harder than it needs to be," you snarl, because anger is easier than softness, simple and clean as a scalpel, and if there is one thing you have learned that the Farm did not teach you it is how to wear your pain as armor and blade in one.  
  
After all, you are nothing but the broken shards of a being, shattered like glass on the pavement; you might as well use them.  
  
"I’m not –" Ortega holds up his hands, perhaps sensing any argument would not be received well, but that's all you need.  
  
"Stop pretending you care about me!" you roar, and in the ensuing silence Ortega's worry falters straight into confused hurt.  
  
"You think I’m pretending?" he asks, very quietly, as if he knows what's going on, as if he thinks –  
  
Fuck. You don't know what he thinks. That's the problem. If you did, it would make it so much easier to tell him what he needs to hear to end this lie.  
  
You are so tired.  
  
You are so tired of pretending to be human, of pretending to be someone Ortega can care for, of pretending that you're worth anything approaching love.  
  
You were stupid to let it get this far.  
  
"You always have been," you snap, and you're no longer sure you're talking to Ortega.  
  
You extend your arm before he can reply, hand curled into a fist, and you settle your fingers over the sleeve of black nanomesh and pull. Like you're shedding your skin, the lie you have kept up all these years.  
  
And you are looking at your arm while you do it because after every reaction you have dreamed up, every avenue this revelation could go down, every flavor of disgust or horror or hatred that could show on Ortega's face, you are still not brave enough to watch his reaction.  
  
You see the exact moment that your scarred skin gives way to the slick orange tattoos, horrible and shiny and it makes your hand shake; the nausea hits you like a physical blow.  
  
Not real. Not human.  
  
Ortega had no idea that he loved a lie.  
  
So you school your expression into the emotionless mask the Farm hammered into you and you hold your forearm out, you offer it to him like a weapon, this proof he needs to realize that you are nothing more than a broken, terrified machine playing at being a person.  
  
You have gotten very good indeed at pretending to not feel pain.  
  
They made sure of that.  
  
"Now we can both stop," you say and, horribly, you can feel yourself on the verge of tears, even though your voice has gone utterly, emotionlessly flat.

Ortega stares at you. He stares at your face, at your exposed forearm, thick with alien markings. It takes him a moment, a moment where you can see him beginning to add everything together; when he realizes, you can tell by the way his eyes widen. His breath hitches.

“Percy,” he says, and he doesn’t sound… _angry_ , he sounds –

No.

You don’t want to think about it. You don’t want to hear it. You don’t.

You want to run, because that is how this was always going to end.

You are not Sidestep anymore. Sidestep died with a gun in their mouth, falling from a window, in the sterile whiteness of the farm, and the thing that they left behind is you. Entropy. An empty thing of smoke and mirrors and broken pieces, capable of nothing but destruction.

A monster.

Knowing that makes this easier to accept.

But you smile at him, again. It is less of a smile than the previous, even; it is a baring of teeth, the expression of a cornered animal, and Ortega seems to realize that. His arm twitches, like he’s keeping himself from doing something.

Attacking you, you suppose.

It’s what you deserve.

“I’m not real. I’m not a person,” you explain. Your voice would scare you if you didn’t already feel comfortably numb, detached from your body like you have done a hundred times out of necessity at the Farm. Like you’re not the one speaking. “They grew me out of a test tube. I’m nothing more than a tool.” You laugh, and it’s flat and unamused and all wrong in your mouth, and Ortega takes a step forward.

You watch him, and you say, “Stop.”

It doesn’t sound like your voice.

Ortega stops. He is looking at you – not at your naked arm, not at the tattoos, striped like the warning of a venomous snake. At your face. Like you mean something other than the code printed onto your skin.

All those scenarios and this is not a reaction you expected, you don’t know what to do with this.

So you will have to make it that way.

_Re-gene_ is just a word but god, you can’t say it, not like this, because saying it makes it too real. Instead you bite the inside of your cheek so hard you taste blood, and fumble for the hem of your shirt with one hand because that more than anything will drive it home.

Every inch of your skin makes you sick, but there’s nothing that tells you what you really are like the barcode.

“Look,” you demand. You pull the shirt over your shoulders and head and pitch it to the ground and you stand there and let him see the neatly printed lines that let the Farm read exactly who you are.

You say, “This is what I’ve always been.”

You say, “A lie. A weapon. I was _made_ to deceive you.”

You say, “So do you still _love_ me?”

And you’re staring at him, waiting for him to get mad because that is what you deserve, because he should be mad, and it takes you a shamefully long amount of time considering you are an infiltration unit to realize that is not what is happening.

That instead, he looks like he’s about to cry.

That’s what makes you freeze.

Because you don’t actually want to hurt Ortega. Even when you fight him as Entropy, your body encased in armor, your nanovores capable of killing him with a touch, you don’t want to hurt him. Even though every blow you land further proves you don’t deserve his kindness, further proves this is the only path you can take.

You are such a layer of masks by now – Sidestep, Percy, Lucius, Entropy – that sometimes it is hard for you to figure out your _own_ motivations. But that is one thing you know.

Ortega is still looking at you.

He says, “Can I touch you?”

You laugh. Distantly, you note the way he flinches, but you spread your arms to present a bigger target, your entire upper body gleaming orange under the lights. “Why are you _asking_?” you say. “I’m _not human_. I was made in a lab. I never even fucking had parents, they made me a telepath and they made me like this, so I would fool people, and you believed them, everyone believed them, it doesn’t _matter_ what you do to me. don’t you get it?”

Ortega says, very quietly, “Is that what you think, Percy?”

You stare at him, because none of this makes sense. Your arms drop back to your sides.

He takes a single, careful step forward, hands raised, and this time you let him. You are breathing too hard. The gentle sound of his feet on the wood floor sounds like the click of the safety on a gun pressed up against your head.

“Has anyone ever asked you what you want before?”

And you open your mouth to tell him he’s an idiot, for being so stupid and sentimental, for not realizing what kind of monster you are even when the evidence is right in front of him, except the words catch in your throat.

“Don’t…” you manage, and you stop, because now you sound like you’re going to cry and you can’t. Not now. Not again.

You can’t afford weakness.

“I know I didn’t,” he continues. “I assumed and – I’m so sorry –”

“Why are you apologizing to a machine?” you croak, the threat of tears scrubbing your voice raw, holding on to what you know is true with tooth and nail because if Ortega can see your tattoos and care anyways then –

It means nothing.

It means everything.

“You’re not a machine, Percy,” Ortega says.

“You don’t know anything about me,” you say, just managing to hold back a sob. “You…I’m not…”

“I know you’re real,” Ortega says, with so much certainty that -- even though you know it's not true -- it's impossible not to believe him at least a little bit.

For a moment you think you can see what it's like not to hate yourself.

For a moment.

It makes everything worse.

But you are so _tired_ that you don’t think you have the energy to keep fighting him on this because Ortega has always been stubborn. And so have you, but your stubbornness was the kind cultivated to keep the Farm crushing you completely back to obedience, the kind that let you survive years of pain, the kind that let you escape.

Not the kind that knows what to do with softness.

“Please,” Ortega says, and takes another half-step.

You realize that he is very, very close.

He holds out a hand with the tentative caution of someone meeting an abused dog for the first time, and says, again, “Can I touch you?”

You stare at him, at his open palm, though a film of tears, fingers curling into fists at your sides, and slowly, painfully slowly, you nod.

But you still flinch, hard, when his arms go around you. You are still not used to people touching you without the intent to hurt, especially not when they can see your tattoos.

And Ortega notices, because he pauses, tries to draw back.

“No,” you say, because as much as you hate to admit it you need the comfort, now that he’s so thoroughly redirected your anger. “It’s fine.”

“It’s not _fine_ ,” Ortega says. There’s anger mixed with the worry in his voice now, and you tense, and it…it would have made you panic, run, if you didn’t recognize it from before in this same apartment, the couch, when you gave him a fragment of the truth; one of the many things they did to you at the farm.

He’s angry _for_ you.

But he must notice your anxiety, because he quiets. He holds you tighter, ducks down, presses a kiss to your head as you sit there, listening to the beat of his heart. A very human thing.

“You know we still need to talk,” Ortega finally says, terribly soft.

“I know,” you say, because…there’s a lot you can say, now.

A lot you can use to convince him that Entropy is right. If you are brave enough to tell it.

“It doesn’t have to be right now,” he clarifies, like he’s scared that will be the thing that makes you run away. which…you can’t fault him for. “But…soon.”

You exhale.

“I don’t want you to deal with this alone any longer,” Ortega says. “I’m here. I love you.”

“You keep saying that,” you mumble.

“Because it’s true.”

You shake your head, though it’s difficult to do given your current position.

“You’re going to regret this,” you say, because it’s the truth. Your voice is barely audible to your own ears, muffled in his shoulder; you don’t expect him to hear it.

But his arms tighten around you.

“No, I won’t,” Ortega says, because he’s never known when to quit.

You still don’t believe him. You can’t. You’ve lived too long hiding your skin for that; knowing what you are, knowing you are a weapon, that you belong to the Farm, that everything you have done is built on a lie.

And even if you did not, you are still Entropy; you are still his enemy, no matter how much you wish it were otherwise.

And even if you were not you are tired.

You have lived too long already, and you’ve made yourself a deal.

But for now…

...you think you can pretend.


End file.
